Page 42 of The Sin Binder's Chains

Silas

This cell is a fucking joke. I mean, really. No chains. No iron. No spelled shackles wrapped around my wrists, no symbols of power carved into the stone to keep me in check. Nothing so crude as the things they’ve had to use on Wrath over the years, nothing so brutal as the bindings meant for Lucien when he was particularly insufferable.

Which, let’s be honest, is always.

I stretch out my legs, lounging back against the velvet-covered chaise, because of course these dramatic, egotistical bastards would put me in a cell that looks like a high-end fucking suite instead of an actual prison.

The walls are deep obsidian, but not cold, smooth to the touch, humming with something ancient, something woven into the very fabric of this place. The Void is a living thing, and this room? It breathes with it.

The furniture is absurd.

A massive, canopied bed with silk sheets the color of rich merlot, too luxurious to be anything other than an insult. A bookshelf lined with old tomes, some of which I swear were stolen from Daemon Academy’s restricted archives. A desk, sleek and black, scattered with ink and parchment, like they expect me to journal my captivity.

And the mirrors. Dozens of them. Lining the walls, hanging from the ceiling, resting on every available surface.

That’s how they keep me here. Not with chains or locks or magic spells, but with my nature.

Because I’m Envy.

And what’s the one thing Envy can’t resist?

Looking.

Wanting. Watching what I cannot touch.

I stare at the mirrors, each one showing me different things.

One flickers between visions of the past, images of things I was never meant to see, Luna, curled in her bed before she knew what she was, before she was ours, dreaming of a life she could never have.

Another holds the present, a view of Lucien and Elias, their expressions grim, their movements precise as they track me through the Void, still too far, still too fucking slow.

And the worst one, the mirror directly across from me, shows her.

Luna.

My Sin-Binder.

My undoing.

She doesn’t know she’s in my line of sight, doesn’t know that every twitch of her fingers, every shift of her expression, every breath she exhales is something I can see but never touch.

Which is why this works.

Because I won’t leave.

Not when I can watch her instead.

The Sub-Sins knew exactly how to keep me docile.

And fuck them for it.

I grin at the mirror like a certified lunatic.

"Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite hallucination," I drawl, stretching out on the ridiculously comfortable chaise like the world's most glamorous hostage. "I gotta say, babe, you lookstunning today. Is that murder in your eyes, or are you just happy to see me?"

Luna, or rather, the version of her trapped in this cursed mirror bullshit, doesn't respond. Obviously.

But that doesn’t stop me from talking.

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